Category: Faculty

With shrinking budgets and ever greater demands on educators to deliver world-class, high quality education for each and every student, it’s critical to address and provide accessible course content to all students, not just those without hearing or sight impairments.

More and more institutions are turning their attention to address this need, and in this case it’s heartening to know there are several tools, services and ways of addressing closed captioning for video in courses.

When working directly with course designers or instructors, I’m always quick to tell them that if they’re developing video content or even presentations with voice over to script what’s they’re going to say – ahead of time.

Screenshot from Brackets on correcting a VTT file. Auto-captions are convenient, but not always helpful. This caption should read, “Thank you David, I’m going to go ahead and enable my webcam. I have a face made for audio rather than video, but when I’m doing these sorts of things I always like to…“

However, this isn’t always possible and in some cases, takes away from the instructor’s capacity to speak fluidly. Sticking to a script can at times seem rather stale, cold and impersonal. There are times when an unscripted set of content may deliver a better end-result for the student. However – providing an accessible asset for hearing impaired students is still necessary (take 2 minutes to read this post over at eLearningbrother.com). In fact, in some cases – students who do not need captions, will still choose to use the captions, because it helps them better identify what’s being said, or because they understand the content better when they hear it and read it at the same time. In my experience, turning captions on has also meant I grow to recognize certain words – I can look those words or concepts up because they’re spelled out in the captions. I can’t count how many times I’ve turned on the captions in a YouTube video when I don’t quite understand the speaker – and it’s the captions that made all the difference.

This video (auto-captioned-uncorrected), takes 20 minutes to watch and covers just one way captioning unscripted content can be done inexpensively with some widely available tools.

On a pedagogical note, some services – like Warpwire, include the ability to search captions and locate in the video where specific words are said (as of 2.0 release). This opens up a slightly different way for instructors to provide content and check to see if students are attending to what’s being shared in the video. As an undergraduate student, many of my instructors would provide guide-sheets that were filled with low-level Blooms Taxonomy type questions. These were great because they helped guide me through the required reading – providing a structure for what I needed to focus on. The same thing can be accomplished by using a caption search function in services – such as Warpwire. Video provides a great way for students to not only watch, rewatch and review content (making delivery of the content consistent), but could also be paired with closed captions (or transcript), so students can attend to – focus on parts of the content as they work through it. While this isn’t a ‘break through’ use of technology – it is of course just an adaption – yet it leverages students capacity to search and provides a means of helping them attend to the content actively.

There’s an interesting post by James Lang over here, giving an honest and really practical account of how to use student response systems in class. While Lang doesn’t intend the post to be technical, it offers some very practical ways of how to implement their use.

In most cases, universities and classes have gone away from whole-sale purchasing ‘clicker’ devices, and relegated access to such services to a platform internet service (such as Polleverywhere or Socrative) and the use of student’s own laptop or mobile devices. Most of these services provide a free level of service that can change the way conversations and some instruction happen in just about any course.

It’s not quite fair to post an article or even refer to a really good one and not tried this myself – and I have. In my experience, I’ve tried using PollAnywhere – at the free level – just to see what kinds of responses and interactions might improve the teaching and learning in my context. In many cases, its really opened up the depth of conversations we have – allowing me to prod students to ask – “Why?” and “What conclusions can you make?” inquiries. In most of my experience before, too many of my students were all too happy to just sit back and ‘take in’ the whole class – and essentially ‘participate’ by saying ‘I agree’ or providing a minimal head nod once in a while.

While use of student response systems (or any technology for that matter) is not the one all to be all and save all – it’s another method that can assist and support what you’re already doing in your course.

If you’d like to try using some kind of SRS, or just want some direction on where to go with this concept, contact Dave Eveland with the Department of Online Education.

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Setting dates for what’s due in a course is often a complex process even if you’re not using some sort of digital mechanism to do so – making sure to include your late policy, correct for official out of class dates and long holidays can be a challenge. It can be done though by thinking about things ahead of time and knowing how to set them in the course.

When using Tests and Quizzes in a course for assessment, setting the dates is pretty simple, esp. if it’s the only thing you’re doing. Creating an assessment is another conversation entirely (because it’s also a complex concept – depending on what you’re trying to do).

If you’ve been given a course to prep, or if you’ve already got your assessments built in Sakai and just need to make them ready for students to take, you can follow the directions for each assessment:

Step 1. In the course, go to Tests and Quizzes

Step 2. Below the Create from Scratch area, on the Working Copies tab (a), select Settings from the Select Action drop down menu (b) for the Quiz you want to adjust or change.

Step 3. On the new page, in the Availability and Submissions section, select the new available, due and late acceptance dates, and other settings as you deem necessary.

Step 4. Select Save Settings and Publish

Step 5. Confirm the setting and choose notification settings.

Step 6. Select the Publish button.

That’s it. Note, also once an assessment is published, if you need to adjust the date/time again, be sure to do so from the Published Copies tab, instead of the Working Copies tab. As long as you’ve not changed the assessment title, if you’ve inserted it previously into a Lesson, it should be good to go. If it doesn’t seem to work from there, just go to the Lesson, and re-insert the link to the assessment, using the Add Content menu.

Ever teach an online course? Those who have know it’s sometimes difficult to know what’s going on with the students taking the course. After all there’s “no way” to engage face to face with them, or maybe there is.

In any case having a pulse on if students are engaging in the course and how they’re engaging can be key. Knowing when to what degree and in what ways students are engaging with course material and each other can help improve the outcomes of the course and help you (the instructor) help students meet with success more often.

One tool available to you in our course site is the Statistics tool. This tool brings together an extensive amount of log data – and some of it in ready-packaged easy to use diagrams and visual models. You an even run custom reports using the Reports tab:

Here are just a few of the tables/graphs you can see just by selecting the tool:

To use the tool, just select it from the tool set. The tool merely reports data – it won’t change anything, but it could help you change how you help your students succeed in your class.

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Looking for a quick easy and FREE (did we say FREE) synchronous way to engage students actively in a course presentation? What if you did so by having students raise their hands? Doesn’t sound revolutionary does it? Ok fine.

What about trying Slido? Or perhaps try other similar tools like it, such as Socrative, Poll Everywhere or Mentimeter? While the notion of getting students to engage more during a presentation may be alien, odd or just undesireable by instructors; providing opportunities for students to engage does help with knowledge retention. Providing students a chance to pause, check for understanding and/or take them from passive consumers to active listeners adds value and can add interest and increase the level of participation in a lecture.

Tools like Slido – especially when paired with the notion that almost every student has an Internet capable device (which they often have with them in class) – can help students engage in lectures more, helping to inform you of their grasp of concepts, drive more focused discussion or help you to clarify areas of confusion.

Could this be done with a show of hands? Yes.

However, doing so also means some students may raise their hand (or not) based on peer choices, or simply raise their hand to demonstrate participation (but not honestly answer the question). A raise of hands is also harder to visually quantify, and it’s harder for students to look around and tangibly recognize a majority or minority of respondents on a multiple choice question.

While these platforms are not a silver bullet, they do a pretty decent job of providing a very easy, low-tech (you often only need to convey a code to students, and then pose the question in a face to face setting) to get this to work.

For more information check out the videos from the sites above or check with Dave E. with the Department of Online Education.

Many of our faculty and courses use the institution’s online streaming service Warpwire. Together with the combined effort of hundreds of faculty, Warpwire houses over 2000 video, image, audio and related media assets, placing, securing and delivering each and every one of them using Amazon’s global content delivery network (CDN) to help all our students make content connections around the world.

Not many of our faculty know however, that Warpwire is a continually evolving platform, and since it’s adoption in 2015, has continued to up the ante of services and features available without increasing the cost to use it.

Most recently Warpwire released two new features: screen capture and live broadcast.

Screen capture – enables users to use a Chrome browser plugin to record a portion of a desktop or laptop screen along with audio and then include it in a course.

Live broadcast – provides a way to stream live sessions via web-cam and audio within a specific course.

Each of these features offers unique and interesting opportunities for online, hybrid and even face to face courses. Some faculty are looking for a way to create short lecture or instructional videos ahead of time. Use of a screen capture platform enables an instructor to pull up a presentation in much the same way many instructors present in face to face courses, but be able to record it. Live broadcast enables instructors to hold live sessions with students, record them and make them available to students afterwards. Live broadcast even includes a means by which faculty can tell how many people are watching the broadcast and can include a live chat during the broadcast. While this may sound a lot like Google Hangouts or even Skype, the benefit here is that it’s all secured and held in an institutionally backed and recommended service. Some students may be wary of attending Hangout or Skype sessions and may violate FERPA regulations.

How else could you use screen capture? Here are some ideas:

Use it to record an overview of the course syllabus (actually screen capture the syllabus and guide students through it, especially the complex parts).

Provide an alternative course resource that can be made accessible through a captioning service. (Most PowerPoint presentations don’t follow appropriate formatting and alternative text requirements to make content accessible to all learners – creating a video and pairing it with captions can make the presentation far more accessible than say the canned presentations from course text publishers.)

Use an internet-based screen capture available to students – for students to record their own video-based presentations to share with the class. (Again, securing this kind of asset with Warpwire verses having students post their speech assignments publicly to YouTube demonstrates better cohesion to FERPA regulations.

Screencasts could be used in a language course for assessment or assessment prep. Create a video with language vocabulary displayed while the instructor pronounces the word. Warpwire will even track which students watched it and when, which can inform your instruction or how well students as a whole did on a unit assessment.

Record a session where you and a colleague discuss or share conversationally about a course topic – knowing you’ve covered all the content the way you want and delivering that content to students consistently every time the course is offered.

Create specific videos for specific assignments as reminders or as quick “60 second helps – in much the same way advertisements create breaks or logical interruptions to television shows.

How else could you use live broadcast? Here are some ideas:

For students taking courses with a lab – such as a science course, schedule and conduct a live broadcast of a complex lab procedure, asking all participants to ask a unique question in the chat about the session’s content or steps (for you to answer during the live broadcast).

In a speech course – provide a chance for students to deliver their speeches asynchronously (live) to others in the course, while the watchers (other students) provide during-broadcast feedback about the quality of the speech.

Bring in a guest speaker located somewhere – anywhere, who can inform or add additional credibility to what you’re already sharing.

What are some other tips in creating these kinds of video assets?

If it’s a screen capture – don’t be afraid of having the video be less than super-polished. Students like to see you in your ‘element’ – you’re not a robot teaching the course you’re a person. Maybe you sneeze, or your cat jumps on the keyboard – those things create a contact point with students.

Keep screen capture content to less than 15 minutes. If you think about it, your tension span at this point in this post is beyond bearable, in fact I’m surprised you’re still reading this. Shorter videos of six to seven minutes are easier to digest and keeping it shorter may help you distill the best of what the “normal” 45 minute lecture may disclose.

When used discretely, creating videos providing feedback to students directly (one per student) on an assignment may be better than just giving a student a letter or percentage grade.

Use screen capture or live broadcast to provide a wrap up or weekly summary of the week or unit’s content.

Use screen captures as a means of introducing discussion forum prompts or questions.

Check out the following tutorials from Warpwire on the use of each of these features for use in your classes:

Lots of online courses look to provide a means of introduction – specifically as a way to warm students up to others taking the course. There’s bound to be some means of engagement of students one with another (or at least there should be). While it’s easy to tell students, “state your name, where you’re from and something unique about yourself”, doing so is an old and rather tired prompt.

Rather, another way to do accomplish much more discussion and interest from students is to have them create a meme and post it to the course discussion area. Meme’s are “an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.” A meme carries with it the idea of carrying forward a framework, while recognizing that other frames of reference exist. In the case of class introductions, using the prompt, “Explain what you do,” can seem daunting and dry. Yet, when paired with a meme as a product – it asks students to create an image or set of images that when given the ‘right’ prompts – help students explain what they do as viewed by different audiences. Take the following one for example on teachers:

Or here’s one on IT Support Desk folks (Tech Support):

Some of the comparisons following the prompts are laughable, entertaining and yet telling at the same time. Use the following prompts or just a few of them:

What my friends think I do

What my mom (parents) think I do

What society thinks I do

What my boss thinks I do

What I think I do

What I actually do

Any amount of searching the Internet will turn up quite an array of these memes, so it may be important to help focus student’s efforts to produce these. You can find a Powerpoint template for creating them here. To be sure these don’t have to be incredibly complex. They can also serve as an entry point to discuss copyright, proper source citation and explanation of meaning. Meme meanings are not always obvious – not unlike puns or humor from one language or culture to another. Students could be prompted to explain their memes or attempt to explain the memes of other students.

Additional prompts could also be included, such as:

What my future will be like

What my parents think my future will be like

What my teacher thinks my future will be like

What my future won’t be like

Keep in mind these prompts and the pairing of them with creating a meme sets students on a path of exploration and elevates their thinking from information recall (about themselves) to reflection, comparison and contrast as well as evaluation which are considered higher order thinking skills.